Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 025

Twenty-Fifth in Frank’s HUGE collection of bread and butter jazz piano licks to add to your bag… by ear, intellect, eye, and muscle…

Table of Contents

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Lesson Goals

To deeply internalize the sound, feeling, and function of the “1-2-3-5” Sequence played as a quadruplet cell through a minor 2 5 1 chord progression.

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Special Note about the Design of these Studies

An extremely effective way to internalize any new lick and to simultaneously develop your comping and soloing chops is to play it “in context”: within an established form over a set of standard chord changes. In this lesson the context is a Minorr 2-5-1 (ii7-V7-i) turnaround chord progression in the key of D Minor.

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Jazz Piano Lick 025 (Etude #1)

A “1-2-3-5” sequence for each chord played in straight 1/8th notes over left hand four-note block chords in the middle register, connected using voice-leading…

Notice that every chord root and 3rd falls on a down beat, while the passing tone (the scale tone that connects them) falls on an up beat, as does the 5 of each chord which adds some tasty syncopation…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 87 beats per minute…

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Jazz Piano Lick 025 (Solfege View of the Melody)

A musically useful way to understand and internalize the melody is to notice that all the notes are derived from the D Harmonic Minor Scale…

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Jazz Piano Lick 025 (Chord Structure View of the Melody)

A musically useful way to understand and internalize the melody is to notice how the sequence naturally outlines the chord structure of each chord type: Eø7 = 1-b2-b3-b5, A7 = 1-b2-3-5, Dm = 1-2-b3-5.

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Jazz Piano Lick 025 (Etude #2)

Now let’s spice things up by swinging the 1/8th notes and applying some tasty jazzifying syncopation in the left hand…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 121 beats per minute…

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Jazz Piano Lick 025 (Your Homework)

Use what you know about form, meter, scales, chords, chord progressions, chord voicings, and left hand patterns to play these etudes in other keys you expect to play in and see what you discover.

Special Note from Frank: If there’s interest, I’d be happy to write this out in a few other keys.

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Study & Practice Reminders

1. You’re singing the Solfege or scatting aloud in order to internalize the sound-feelings, right?
2. You practice with a metronome or rhythm track in order to instill good time, right?
3. You record yourself, listen to the playback immediately, self evaluate, and respond accordingly, right?

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